Condo Week 2.0: In the Books

This is part six, the final part, of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

Thursday night in Denver (or some suburb thereof) our hotel had some technical problem, so no TV and no Internet. Somehow we didn't care. We talked half-heartedly about where to get dinner from the many take-out and delivery places nearby, but none of them interested us ... so we skipped dinner. Yeah, that happens all the time. I think I had an apple from our little stash of food.

We were up pretty early on Friday morning and out of there. I noticed that only about half the people around the hotel, staff and guests, were wearing masks. In the rest of the state that we saw, it was more like 80%. But people were keeping their distance from each other, even in the elevator. So that's something.

We got off the interstate south of Springs

Hines Creek Valley

and headed west, to Custer and Archuleta counties. In between we had a very nice lunch at the Three Barrel Brewery (with tables outside under a shade, so Carly could join us), and enjoyed the beautiful views off US 160 in the Rio Grande National Forest. But the main thing is that now I've been to all the counties in Colorado.

After that, we came down into New Mexico and went through Santa Fe, where I picked up a Subway sandwich. We stopped a couple of hours later in a little village south of I-40 and ate dinner at the city park as the last of the sunlight faded. Then we drove into Vaughn, about 20 miles further on, and got an inexpensive ($49, plus $10 for the dog) room at the Desert Motel, just the kind of place I always like to find: clean, cheap, no frills. This one comes without air conditioning, but apparently one doesn't need A/C in central New Mexico at the end of July. It was plenty comfortable.

Breakfast was at a Denny's in Roswell. On their "patio." They closed off the parking lot on one side -- the west side -- and lined up half a dozen tables in the shade of the building. Presumably in the afternoon they move the arrangement to the other side. I don't know what they do for lunch, when there wouldn't be any shade.

The audio books we've listened to on this trip were Reasonable Doubt, by Charles Todd -- a whodunit set in England in the 1920s; Murder in Mayfair, by D.M Quincy, a disposable mystery set in London in 1814, most remarkable for making almost no mention of any historical figures or events (I believe the name Napoleon came up once, but that's pretty much it; what's the point of "historical fiction" if you're not going to tie it into anything that makes a time unique or interesting?); Blue Moon, by Lee Child, an entertaining action story set in some unnamed American city, and featuring his crime-fighting hero Jack Reacher (I couldn't believe my luck when I found there was a Reacher novel I'd never read or listened to); The Evil Men Do, by John McMahon, another present-day crime thriller set in Georgia -- these novels make me wonder: when did fictional detectives quit being idiosyncratic, like Poirot and Marple and Queen and Stout, and instead all become flawed? Is anybody else tired of hearing about how the detective has to not only solve the crime but overcome alcoholism and the demons in their past all at the same time? That's not to say McMahon's book wasn't interesting -- it was -- but after a few of these novels they all start to feel formulaic. (On the other hand, there's Jack Heath's detective Timothy Blake, a cannibal who savors his flaws.) We also started Alan Furst's novel Under Occupation, a spy thriller set in occupied France, but didn't finish it. Usually we just abandon whatever we were listening to when we get home, but this one's not very long and I'm enjoying it, so I'm going to listen to the rest of it on my own.

And here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Nearing the End

This is part five of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

The weather on Tuesday was perfect for a day spent indoors. This was fine, as we had planned to spend the morning at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, a little way north of town. We got there just after opening at 10AM on a cool, rainy day. I did not melt, nor did I clump. I only got a little wet on the walk from the car to the entry.

The museum started off some years ago as a collection of landscapes featuring local scenes and fauna. As it grew, its ambit grew to include all of North America, then all fauna everywhere. I'll let you speculate as to why this happened.

Outside the museum are a number of monumental bronzes: buffalo, of course, and elk, and other local critters, all quite beautifully done. Inside are more bronzes, but also a good-sized collection of paintings, mostly of mountain creatures but including big game from Africa, Europe and Asia. For me, though, the main draw was the landscapes. A moose statue is nice but it's nothing compared to the real thing; a painting of beautiful scenery, on the other hand, is almost as good as the actual thing. A painting of antelope on the scrub of southern Wyoming takes me back, not because of the antelope but because of the scenery. Elk in snow before a range of mountains does the same thing, again not because of the elk but because of the mountains. It's places I remember.

(On East Gros Ventre Butte, which looms over Jackson from the front of our condo, there is a single tree growing near the top, away from all the other trees, and situated exactly on the crest so that it stands against the horizon. I found myself staring at that one tree and thinking about a single tree similarly situated on a rise in Kenya

Kenya, evoked daily

; I had taken a picture of it that, to me, evokes the isolation of that bit of the world: there is the tree, and nothing else. You can slap as many animals down in front of it as you like, but it's the tree that takes me back to that time and place.)

I decided to cook that night -- one can only do takeout so often -- so we went to the supermarket and bought ingredients for conchiglie in salsa russo, and since we were there we also bought bread and cheese and had cheese sandwiches for lunch. After we got back to the condo I realized I'd forgotten an indispensable ingredient, tomato sauce, so I walked over to the fru-fru little market a block over for an 8-ounce can. It would've almost been cheaper to take an Uber back to Albertson's; I couldn't believe what they charge: $1.99 for a little can of sauce that's no better than what I can get back home for 34 cents. Well, at least it gives me something to bitch about.

Sherry knitted the evening away and we once again watched some old movies on TV (The Apartment, and something else I don't remember). This being the Year of the Pandemic, I guess I can't mind too much spending so much of our trip indoors like that, but I hope it isn't going to feature on future condo weeks. It'd hardly be worth leaving home; after all, we get all those same channels and more on our own televisions.

Cache Creek

On Wednesday we took a walk across town, then up into Bridger-Teton National Forest, up one side of Cache Creek and back down on the other. It was cool and dry, and we got started really early, when the fog was still in the valleys around us. There were very few people about until the very end of the hike, when we started to encounter a number of people on mountain bikes. 

After our first hike last week, up the side of Snow King Mountain, I felt like I'd stepped hard on a sharp rock with my left foot. It bothered me that day but was fine the next day. Then when we hiked up Cascade Canyon, I made it a point to wear hiking boots instead of tennis shoes. When I put the boots on I felt much better in them, so I figured it was just because the soles of my sneakers are pretty soft, compared to the boots, and the boots' insoles are much thicker. Still, after the hike my left foot kind of hurt again. I didn't think much of it. But yesterday, after hiking across Jackson and up the creek and back down, when we reached about six miles I just couldn't go any farther. Sherry walked the last 2 miles back to the condo and got the car to come pick me up. When I got home and took my boots off ... Oh. My. God. I could not walk at all. It feels like I have a stress fracture in my left heel. (That's just a guess; I can't think of what else it could be.) This morning when we were loading the car I put my shoes on, and found that I could at least walk with a limp. I have an appointment with the podiatrist Monday. Meanwhile, I'm afraid to take off my shoes.

Carly & Aspen
we still can't tell them apart

Today, Thursday, we got an early start leaving Jackson, and reached Golden to pick up Carly around 5pm. Now we're in a hotel just south of Denver. Tomorrow we'll get off the main roads and go through the two remaining unvisited counties of Colorado, then drive across New Mexico towards home. I figure we'll be there by Saturday night, but maybe not. We'll see. Not going to rush it.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Two Good Days

This is part four of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

Yesterday, Sunday, was a day of rest. We had leftover pizza for breakfast (the true breakfast of champions). It was the last day of the English Premier League season, and there were 10 matches being played all at the same time. We had a choice of four shown on channels available to us in this condo, plus five on my cellphone, on a new NBC service called Peacock. One match was on a channel we couldn't get.

But we got to watch the matches that mattered the most to us. Since Liverpool had already won the title, and their opponent, Newcastle United, had nothing at stake, we didn't watch that. (Well, I did watch the first minute on my phone, just enough to see Newcastle score the fastest goal it's ever scored in a Premier League match (but Liverpool won, 3:1)); but then we switched to the TV, and watched (mostly) Chelsea beat Wolverhampton, 2:0, largely thanks to our favourite player, American sensation Christian Pulisic.

Christian Pulisic

We also flipped over to the Leicester City -- Manchester United match, but Leicester was in poor form and the result there wasn't really in much doubt. These two matches pretty much settled the question of who would play Champions League football next season. (Wolverhamption is still in the Europa League, and if they win that competition -- slight chance -- they they also will be in the Champions League.)

As soon as the English soccer was done, we found the final of the National Women's Soccer League tournament on TV, and watched the Houston Dash, which I guess is "our" team, win over the Chicago Red Stars in a very good match. So, Yay!

Then we took our dirty clothes for a walk down to a laundromat about a mile away and washed them. Sherry wasn't hungry; she sat in the laundromat and knitted, while I went next door for lunch. The Chinese restaurant was closed so I forced myself to go to the Mexican restaurant in the same strip-center. At least I got to use the remnants of Spanish that I retain. And it wasn't bad, although they got my order slightly wrong. (Flour tortilla instead of corn.)

We lazed around the apartment the rest of the day, watching old movies on TV. That evening we went over to the supermarket and picked up food for today's breakfast, and while we were there we got a chicken pot pie that we split for Sunday dinner. It was enough.

This morning we loaded our car up and were out the door early; we stopped for coffee and drove up to the Park, and had a nice breakfast picnic of sourdough bread, Gouda cheese, grapes and coffee, then drove on to Jenny Lake, where we took the shuttle-boat across and hiked up to Hidden Falls, which was very pretty. We continued up the steep trail to

Hidden Falls

Inspiration Point, which was also very pretty though not so much as the name would imply. We had intended to turn back at that point, but the guy at the boat dock had said that after Inspiration Point, the path levelled out a lot and continued up Cascade Canyon to a junction with another trail about four miles further on. We had time, and no heart attacks, so we went on for at least a couple of miles, to a meadow where people had reported seeing moose. We didn't see any, and after watching the meadow for maybe 20 minutes we started back. The whole hike ended up being about 5 miles, which is a lot for me, especially at these altitudes.

That was, basically, the whole day. When we got back to town, we walked over to the Town Square and did a little shopping, and found a cafe for a light lunch (I had Cajun Eggs Benedict: eggs and boudin on toasted slices of French bread, topped with a good hollandaise and some interesting hash-brown-like potato accompaniment). Came back to the apartment and vegged out for the rest of the day.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Saturday

This is part three of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

We took a driving tour of the top photo spots in the park that we found on the Grand Teton National Park App. Well, we didn't quite make it there for sunrise, but we were close: We stopped for coffee at a convenience store on the highway, technically after sunrise, but before the sun got above the low mountain to the east. We watched fog rising from the bogs of Flat Creek across the road, then headed up into the park.

The first stop was along the Snake River, near where it passes in front of the Grand Teton (which is the name of the tallest mountain in the range, 13,770 feet high, and the prettiest). We were definitely not the first people out there this morning, but it wasn't too crowded. The small parking lot was full, and a few cars parked along the entry road. We made the easy hike out about a quarter of a mile along the riverbank -- supposedly to "a large beaver dam," but I never saw that. It was still in the high 30s; I had a windbreaker on but was wishing then that I'd also worn long sleeves

Grand Teton & the Snake River

underneath. We saw a couple of sandhill cranes in the distance, too far for a decent picture (though Sherry got a recording of their calls), and other birds, and the gorgeous mountains in the near distance. We stayed there a lot longer than we needed to, just taking one picture after another.

It's hard to decide which picture to post here.

the Ansel Adams shot

Next we drove up the road a ways to a place called the Snake River Overlook. This is the spot where Ansel Adams took his most famous picture of the park, back in 1942. I took the same picture. Mine is probably never going to be as famous as his, but the subject matter is as good.

Mt Moran

After that came the Oxbow Bend turnout, where a change in the course of the river left a segment stranded. As a result, it tends to be glassy-smooth and gives a nice reflection of Mount Moran.

Then we made the longish drive, not quite 20 miles (with a stop for breakfast at another convenience store) to the Jackson Lake overlook. This, I realized, is a place I've been twice before, once 15 years ago when we were here with Nancy & Jeff, and once on the way to Washington for another condo week. That second time I just stopped to take a picture of the fall foliage, but it still counts. It's a beautiful view (of course), but a pretty long drive, and it's right on the way to Yellowstone; so I was thinking, we should've skipped that particular stop on the Photo Trail, since we could stop there next time we passed.

Jackson Lake

Still, it's an iconic shot, the same one I took 15 years ago. But this time the weather was better.

Jenny Lake

After that, following the Photo Trail guide, we re-traced our route south until we reached Moran Junction, where another road branches off and runs through the park a little to the west of the highway. By this time it was getting warm and crowded. We stopped at the Jenny Lake Overlook, which gives a nice view of the glacial cut on the opposite side of the lake, and hiked along the lakeshore until we decided the path wasn't going to take us down to the water's edge. (We later learned that it just goes all the way around the lake, about 8 miles.)

The next place on our tour was Inspiration Point, which, it turns out, is on the other side of the lake. The road doesn't go there: you either hike 6 miles, or take the shuttle-boat and hike 4 miles. By this time, the Jenny Lake Visitors' Center, where the boat-dock is, was jammed with several thousand people. The parking lot was full and cars lined the road in. There were posses of children, and groups of people lined up (socially distant) for the ranger station and the park shop. We decided we would go to the Point, but not today. So I wanted to know (a) how much the boat costs, and (b) what their operating hours are. This is information you would expect to find easily, on conveniently placed signs like the ones directing you to the boat-dock. But no. It is, apparently, something of a secret.

So we hiked down to the boat dock, which is about a quarter of a mile down. When we got there, there was a long line of people blocking the way to the desk; they already had their tickets, I assume, or were waiting to buy them. I just went on down past them to a point where I couldn't get by safely; there was a bridge to the dock, divided into In and Out sides. The In side was full of people waiting; the Out side was full of people coming off an arriving boat. Once they were gone, I stood studying the layout, and finally decided that, yes, I could get to a person at the counter to ask. So I started down the Out side of the bridge. At that point, a girl who was just standing at the end of the bridge -- I'd assumed she was just waiting for someone -- asked if I had any questions she could answer (with a tone of voice like she was going to call security). Well, damn, girl, why didn't you ask me when I was standing there next to you for two minutes? Waste my time....

Anyway, so now we know how much the boat is, and that they start at 7:30 in the morning every day. So we'll be back, probably Monday or Tuesday, after the weekend crowds are gone (we hope). And at this point, we decided that we're not going to go to Yellowstone at all on this trip. We could change our minds again, but it's so far to that park that we'd have to leave at 5:30 AM just to get some early-morning pictures; and there are so many people ... and we've been there before anyway; it just doesn't seem worth going again. But, like I say, we might change our minds again. Maybe if the crowds in Grand Teton on Monday are vastly lessened, we might re-think the decision.

Chapel of the Transfiguration

Our last stop was at the Chapel of the Transfiguration and Menor Ferry. Everything in this area was closed because of the pandemic, but we walked around it, looking at the old buildings. The ferry is from the 19th Century, a double-hulled boat that was dragged back and forth across the river by the force of water, guided by traveller-gears on a cable. The captain would angle the hulls slightly so that the pressure from the river's flow was greater on one side than the other, which would push the boat toward the far side of the river, with the cable holding it in line for the opposite dock. As it approached the dock, he'd point the bows of the hulls directly into the flow, equalizing the pressure, and that would cause the boat to straighten in the river and nestle in against the dock. Very clever.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Trip 2.0: Jackson Hole

This is part two of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

 

Jackson Hole

So the drive up from Laramie to Jackson was pretty uneventful. The governor of Wyoming, in a misguided effort to save money after having to deal with the costs to state revenues of Corona Virus, ordered a bunch of highway rest areas closed. Today's newspaper featured a story about residents who live along highways having to deal with human feces along their driveways, and of course the expense of cleanup is going to be borne by the state.

I just thought that was kind of funny. I feel sorry for the highway travellers who just reach the point of having to take a dump out in the open because the state's trying to save a buck. Do rest areas really cost that much to operate?

Anyway. While I was planning this trip I found a web site called Only In Your State with all kinds of state-specific clickbait. I checked the page on Best Burgers in Each State, and found Broadway Burgers, a place in Rock Springs, listed. Since we would be passing through around lunch time, we went there. They were open only for curbside service, but they did have a couple of outside tables, so we ate there: basic burgers with all the trimming. We split a basket of fries, and we each ordered a milkshake (that being another specialty of the house). Everything -- I mean everything -- was great. The basket of fries was so big even I couldn't finish it. The burger was perfectly prepared, completely old-fashioned, with the shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes and chopped onion on a nice big, soft bun. So, so good. And the shakes were the old-fashioned kind: delivered in a parfait glass, whipped cream and cherry on top, and on the side, the metal mixing cup half-full of seconds.

It was, after all, National Vanilla Ice Cream day, and we celebrated in appropriate style.

We cruised up alongside the Wind River and Gros Ventre mountain ranges. When I was new to Wyoming, and travelling back and forth along I-80, I couldn't wait to get up and see this part of the state. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the USA, but now, as you approach Jackson and the National Parks, it becomes congested with vacation traffic.

That's the biggest change I've noticed here. When I came to the mountains of Wyoming 35 years ago, I was pretty much assured of being the only car on the road most of the time. The last time I was here, 15 years ago, it was much busier (in October, after the season), but even the town of Jackson was small and quaint. Our condo was at the edge of town, two blocks from the main square.

The last decade and a half has seen Jackson prosper in many ways. It's a large city now, by Wyoming standards, something like 10,000 people, and according to yesterday's paper, despite the pandemic, this year's tourism is setting records. The vacant lots have all been built into lodging, and there are no vacancies in any of them; the highway into town is lined with trendy new businesses for several miles (heading south, that is; to the north Jackson Hole is all protected land, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post). Jackson is crowded, and its ambience is exactly the same as what I experienced last year at Tahoe: Western American Vacationland, sort of Disneyesque.

The city of Jackson passed a mask ordinance very early on in the pandemic; Teton County, where Jackson sits, adopted the same ordinance soon after. This pissed off Wyoming's governor, he of the rest-area fiasco, but the city and county blew off his blustering and kept their ordinance in place. While Teton County has a number of cases (72 by today's count), it's fairly well controlled. All the shops in town require masks, most give them away, many limit the number of people in their shops, and most people on the street wear masks routinely, even when they are maintaining social distancing.

This morning we went for a short hike up Shade Monkey Trail and Sink or Swim Trail, on Snow King Mountain just a few blocks from our apartment. Very nice, especially the shady parts. The idea was, a short hike in the morning, then get cleaned up and go to the National Wildlife Museum of Art a couple of miles north of town. Instead, we walked through downtown, shopping for T-shirts and such. We picked up lunch from a take-away bagel place around the corner and ate in the apartment. Sherry turned the TV on and started knitting, and before you knew it, it was too late to go to the museum, which closes fairly early. So we watched movies on TV (The Bourne Supremacy and  The Bourne Ultimatum, with their excellent fight scenes and car chases) until it was time for dinner; which we ordered from the Nepali restaurant half a block down the street. Like I said, the town is full of trendy new businesses.

The plan for tomorrow is to head up the road for a photo excursion around Grand Teton National Park. I'm hoping for an early start, both to beat the weekend crowds and to get the early-morning low sun. We'll just see how that works out.

And here's a link to the picture album for this trip.

By the way, if you're reading this in your email, please click the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make somebody happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit; though I think it's always worth reading again....

Condo Week 2.0

This trip did not get off to the best start. We were in no hurry, as we were only driving as far as Amarillo on the first day, an easy day's drive. We stopped as usual at our preferred travel-breakfast restaurant in Kerrville, an hour out of San Antonio.

The staff there, and most of the patrons, were not wearing masks. Kerr County appears to be solid Trump country, so common sense is laid aside in favour of And-The-Horse-You-Rode-In-On political expression. We almost went elsewhere, but I do like the food at this little mom-and-pop place, and had to think hard about that. Then the waitress was there asking what we wanted to drink, and when I hesitated, still deciding, Sherry assumed I was just leaving it up to her, and ordered coffee. I was still thinking about going over and cancelling, telling the waitress why we weren't comfortable there, until she brought the coffee. At that point I felt committed. (They did at least have a sign on the door asking patrons not to sit at dirty tables until they'd had the chance to bus them and wipe them down with sterilizer.)

Had my two breakfast tacos & two cups of good coffee. Sherry went out to walk Carly while I paid the bill. That's when I realized I'd left home without my wallet.

That was the end of Condo Week 1.0. After an hour's drive home, we launched Condo Week 2.0. It has, so far, gone much better than Version 1.0. Kind of like the difference between Windows 7 and Windows XP. (I still miss my Windows XP computer, which lasted 16 years with no major problem, and 3 more years after the first hard drive failed; compared to this Apple MacBook Air, which lasted a few months before the motherboard had to be replaced (under the manufacturer's warranty), and another year before it had to be replaced again (under the credit card extended warranty). It's already getting persnickity again, but if the damn board goes again, so does the computer.)

But I digress.

We make the trip to Colorado with the dog every year, at Christmas, so we have our favourite spots: the restaurant in Kerrville; the hotel in Amarillo and the Thai place across the road; the breakfast burritos smothered in green chili at Sierra Grande in Des Moines, New Mexico; and, for some reason, a gas station in Castle Rock, Colorado. (That last is just coincidence; no matter where I fill up the time before, that's always where I need another tank. I don't know why.) This time it's summer, but we hit all the same spots. Because we're going on to Wyoming, to a condo where pets aren't allowed, we dropped Carly off at our niece's house in Golden -- via a touchless curbside delivery, of course, because of the pandemic. Their dog,

cousins

Aspen, is Carly's unrelated identical-twin cousin. I wouldn't have thought that possible, but if they didn't have collars on it would be almost impossible to tell them apart.

Now we're in Laramie for the night, after a stop at Vedauwoo Rocks

Turtle Rock, in Vedauwoo Rocks

(pronounced VEE-da-voo) in the Laramie Mountains. I used to go up there when I lived in Cheyenne. You'd just pull off the road and start climbing around in the rocks. Now it's all been improved by the Forest Service (it's in the Medicine Bow National Forest), and there's a campground and places for RVs and marked trails and warning signs, and they charge fees (which we don't have to pay, being Old Folks with the lifetime pass, but still...). Thirty-five years ago, there'd have been almost no one around on a Saturday; now, the parking lot was full, on a Wednesday. I hadn't realized that so much had changed, in what seems like the blink of an eye until I consciously think about how long it's actually been since I was there.

Before dinner we took a little tour of Laramie; our hotel is up on a ridge west of town, while the town is down in the valley. In Wyoming, all the towns in the valleys, because that's where the water is and the wind isn't. Laramie now is as big as Cheyenne was when I lived there in the '80s -- 30,000 people, but it also has the University of Wyoming, with its 14,000 students, so it seems bigger. But looking from my hotel across the city, it is clearly a very small city. We're thinking of buying a summer home here. We went across town (took no time at all) and then back to the old part of the city, 3rd & 4th Streets, and had a nice dinner at a brew pub called Accomplice. (Sherry discovered that you can now use "Covid-19 precautions" as a filter on Trip Advisor. That's good to know.) Excellent beer, excellent pizza. Apple fritter? We disagreed: Sherry liked it because it was crunchy; I thought it tasted burnt.

And as we were wandering back to our car, we passed a small bar filled with happy college-aged people, all crowded together without masks, ensuring the next generation of corona virus. Sad that, in a few weeks, one percent of them will be dead and a third of them will live with heart and lung ailments for the rest of their lives. Without having had the pleasure of a lifetime of smoking tobacco and eating fatty foods. So sad.

By the way, if you're reading this in your email, please click the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make somebody happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit; though I think it's always worth reading again....

Isolation Relief

Lots of people are finding lots of ways of getting relief from their isolation in the time of corona virus. This is one of the best sites I've found for idle wandering, on the Web and in my mind.

Go to Windowswap

Passing It Along

I think this is important.

Reading the Pandemic Wandering blog posts

One of the things about this blogger program: the posts show up in reverse chronological order. Maybe there's a way to change that, but I don't want to change it for all my posts. That would be stupid. But it would be nice if I could have a series of posts, like the ones I just made for the recent trip to Ohio, appear in reverse order, so people could easily read them in chronological order.

This is the only way I know of to do that: Click here. That will take you to the first post of the series, and then at the bottom should be a link to the next. Keep reading until you get back here.

Pandemic Wandering: The End, But Not The End

I woke up at 4AM in Henderson, Kentucky, feeling bright-eyed and bushy tailed so I hit the road early. There was one outlying county in Western Kentucky, right on the Mississippi River -- one of those places that has only one road going through it, a county that will require a special effort to get to -- so I knew I had to get that one this trip, no matter what. After that there were 3 counties in southern Missouri that were less vital; counties I knew I could get on the way somewhere at some point. But a quick check of Google Maps last night told me that getting them on this trip would only add 3 hours to the drive home, which would already be two days' drive, so I figured I might as well go that way.

A thing of beauty poses
at the Mississippi River

I had planned to drive back roads to the Kentucky county, but forgot to tell Google Maps that, so ended up going pretty much directly there, and probably saved an hour or more by doing that. By the time I remembered what I had planned, I was in fairly flat country, which I figured wasn't worth the added time. Likewise for the trip across Missouri, until I actually got to the 3 destination counties, which were off the main roads. The road that connects the three is an Ozark Mountains Scenic Route, so that was fairly nice. I'd give it three and a half stars for pleasure driving.

By the time I got to the second of the three -- Texas County, as it happens; county seat: Houston -- I was dying for a shady spot to take a nap in. I was falling asleep at the wheel, and in my experience, when that happens, I need like a 5-minute nap and then I'm good to go the distance. I found Emmett Kelly Park in Houston. (Emmett Kelly was famous in my parents' time; I knew the name and that he was a clown, but not like Bozo, more of a rodeo clown.) There were two shaded spots, both taken, so I ended up finding some shade at a gas station on the main highway to try to nap in. Not a success.

Decided to take the main road back to the highway, because the highway went through that last of the 3 counties. To continue on the scenic route would have taken, I figured, maybe 30 minutes longer and it just wasn't exciting enough. Turned out, though, that the main road was under construction literally the entire way back to the highway, so the scenic route probably would have been a half hour faster.

And after that, it's been freeway all the way, or highway at least; right now, I'm stopped in some town in Oklahoma on a major US highway, not a freeway, where the speed limit changes every 200 yards and there are lots of traffic signals, and at each one there's a pair of semi tractors first in line, so it's a really frustrating drive. Yet Google Maps says it's not only the fastest route, but also the only one without tolls. (Having paid all my taxes for better than 50 years, I object to having to pay again to use the highways. On the plus side, though, I discovered today that my TexasTag works in Oklahoma, too, so I don't have to stop at the cash window. It makes the whole transaction only slightly less objectionable.)

Tomorrow I will get home, and it will be boring all the way, so I won't bother writing another post but will just let this one be the wrap-up. On a theme I introduced in a previous post, my little Sacramento Jag is drawing admiration where ever I stop. A convenience store clerk came out to look at it and to talk about what a joy it must be to drive in "these hills 'round yar" but cautioned me to be careful because "these folks drive with a sense of entitlement." That was the only multisyllabic word he used in the whole conversation. A guy at the hotel last night insisted on parking his truck on one side of my car and his motorcycle on the other, because "that's a purty car and these people, they don't care, they'll ding it up" otherwise. And a lady at a gas station asked if it was OK if she took pictures of my car. I said sure, just leave a dollar under the windshield wiper.

It's an ego boost. At the same time, it reminds me that it's not me. Nobody wants my picture....

And once again, here's a link to the pictures from this trip. The only ones I took today were the one above, and a similar one, so if you've already looked at them there won't be anything new to see.

Oh, one last thing, because I told the clerk at tonight's hotel desk that this was going in my blog: the fancy electric sign out front said rates started at $39.95, but the cheapest rate she had was $50 a night. I asked her who the $39.95 rate was for, disabled veterans and first responders? She said no, "This is so embarrassing ... we lost the manual for that sign...." So until the LED bulbs burn out in 30 years, it's going to be flashing $39.95.

I suggested she get a triggerhappy sheriff's deputy with a shotgun.

Pandemic Wandering, Day 6

So I've been through all the counties of Ohio now; and today I went through all the counties I'd planned to get to in Indiana. The original plan is to get one more county in Kentucky, and a few in southern Missouri, before heading home. That may change: after I post this blog I'm going to get on Google Maps and decide just how badly I want those remaining counties, compared to just how badly I want to get home.

Ohio was ... well, not very exciting. Pretty enough, like England after a good ironing. Everything green, farm after farm, copses of trees surrounded by fields, a stream here, a stream there, quaint little towns each with its Marathon station and six churches. The highways run straight from one to the next, a legacy of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (that's the law that gave us townships, ranges and sections, and drew all those nearly-straight lines on the map). Dull, orderly, settled.

Indiana is similar, although as you get close to the Ohio River it gets a little disorderly, and that's where I was today, for the most part. I found myself driving alongside the path of the old Whitewater Canal, which depended on the contours of the land and so wasn't all that straight, and the road alongside respects the hills and streams, too, and while not nearly as much fun as driving in eastern Kentucky, in the Appalachian moun

abandoned lock on the
Miami & Erie Canal

tains, it was a lot more fun than driving from, say, Indianapolis to Springfield.

When I was a schoolboy I was taught that the State of New York dug the Erie Canal and commerce was magically transformed. I never knew, though, that there were other canals in the US. A lot of them. The success -- the immediate success of the Erie spurred the construction of canals all across the settled parts of the country, which meant Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. So today I saw remains of two of those: the Miami and Erie Canal, in Ohio, and the Whitewater, in Indiana.

Headquarters of the Whitewater
Canal Company (1842)

Of course, the coming of the railroad doomed canal operations to the dustiest pages of history, but for a while there, maybe 30 years, they were the Wave of the Future, and huge amounts of money were invested in their construction and maintenance. It's too bad they didn't survive long enough to become tourist attractions, like canals in Europe.

I saw some graphs on TV this evening that make me want to get home. It was a series of four graphs, representing the corona virus pandemic in four industrialised nations: Italy, Spain, France, and the US. In each of the European countries, the infection rates shot up early, then went steadily down, back almost to zero. But in the US, it shot up to a peak, dipped slightly, and has continued at the rate of roughly 20,000 new infections a day ever since. We are making no headway in countering this disease in this country. Of course, most of the infections are coming from places where people are packed closely together: nursing homes, prisons, meat plants and other labor-intensive industrial operations (and soon, Trump rallies); but people who work at those places go home and spread the infection to their families, and they go to church on Sunday and spread the infection to their coreligionists, and they go to the takeout counter at the local restaurant and spread the infection to the workers there, who then go home and spread it to their families, their coreligionists, their friends ... more slowly, perhaps, but as relentlessly. And since, from what I've seen on this trip, very few people are taking the whole thing seriously, I am not as willing to be out among these people as I was when I thought San Antonio's response to the problem was normal, i.e., everybody in a mask, everybody keeping distance.

I guess our best hope for the future is that all the people who go to the Trump rallies next week in Tulsa and Mobile, and where ever else he's going to be, infect each other and die before the November election. That way we'll have a better chance of getting a competent government in place come January, and then things can start to improve. An awful thing to wish for, and I don't honestly wish for it. But there would be a certain poetic justice, a cosmic irony if you will, if it happened that way.

Oh, and once again, here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

Pandemic Wandering, Day 5

So this day was fairly clearly bifurcated. In the morning, I drove through Jaguar Heaven: narrow winding mountain roads in good condition with little traffic and gorgeous weather: dramatic patches of fog in the hollers, puffy white clouds higher up. The scenery was consistently pretty all morning, with forest and streams and occasional small towns. I got all the counties of Kentucky that I'd intended to pass through, and got to the Ohio River around two o'clock in the afternoon.

Within ten minutes everything had changed. As soon as the big river is out of sight in the rearview mirror, Ohio flattens out and becomes dull. Traffic appears out of nowhere to clog the straight, monotonous highways, bunching at the many traffic signals (There is, I think, only one in all of Kentucky east of Lexington. But every cross street in Ohio seems to warrant one, and they are always red for cars on the main road.) The blessing is that Ohio is a pretty small state, and I'm speaking as both a Westerner and a snob.

One thing in Ohio's favour: they seem to take the corona virus a little more seriously here. Most people wear masks. Businesses, while open, have done sensible things like reorganised traffic patters in the shops and restaurants with one-way aisles; disposable menus and utensils are the rule here. And everybody keeps their distance from everyone else.

I took only one photograph today, so I might as well put it here. Look closely.

Traffic jam legacy

So: I've reached the farthest point I planned to go to on this trip. That means that, technically, I started for home when I turned left on US 20 this evening. I figure it'll take me at least 3 more days to get home, probably 4; the plan is to drift back down to the Ohio River in Indiana, then clip the corner of Kentucky, mosey across southern Missouri, and then pick up a freeway in Kansas and head home. But if my previous experience with Indiana is anything to go by, I may not wait until Kansas. We'll see.

Oh, and I just remembered one other nice thing that happened today. I was stuck in traffic north of Columbus when the car next to me honked and the driver signalled that he wanted to tell me something. A brake light out? A low tire? Some piece of clothing hanging out of my trunk? I turned down the radio and dropped my window and he shouted out that I was driving his dream car.

It's not the first compliment this little grey Jag has prompted, nor even already the last, but it was the nicest and most surprising. Made me feel good, until the next closed-for-construction road I encountered. Google Maps got a workout this afternoon.

Pandemic Wandering, Day 4

Okay! So. Off to wander. My first stop, after breakfast, was at Cummins Falls State Park, about an hour and a half out of Nashville. In order to get to the Falls themselves, and the swimmin' hole, you have to hike through The Gorge. And for that, you need a permit, $6.57. And there are a limited number of such permits given out each day. And today's permits were already sold out.

Well, that's okay, I guess; I didn't so much want to go swimming as to just see the falls. They are reportedly among the prettiest falls in the state. So there's an overlook that you can hike to without a permit, so I did that.

It's about a half mile on a mostly easy trail; a few steep spots but not bad. Very few people along the way. When I got to the overlook, there was a man and his grandson (or granddaughter; it was kind of hard to tell) in the little wedge-shaped area from which you can actually see the falls. The kid was crying because (s)he wanted to go down to the falls. You know that particularly irksome whiney cry that kids have when they're not really crying but just trying to make you think they're crying? First bad thing of the day, since I don't count not being able to get a permit. I really felt sorry for the grandfather, because you know that if he'd known to get a permit on line, he would have, and now he was defeated and diminished as a grandfather for his lack of tech savvy. I often feel defeated like that myself, though seldom diminished, and certainly never as a grandfather.

So they finally leave and I get into the wedge and drag out my big ol' digital SLR camera, the one that I spent all day yesterday taking pictures of cars with. Add a neutral-density filter to the front of the lens and aim for the falls. Nothing happens. Fuss with various settings, still nothing. Finally notice that the low battery warning is flashing. Should still have had enough juice for pictures without flash, but I drag out the other battery and change it. By now I am surrounded by a small crowd of people who have never heard of Social Distancing, and once again I am the only person with a mask. I came this close to pulling my mask down and faking a coughing fit in their direction, just to make a point.

Anyway, I got my picture.

After hiking back to the car, I started off for the New Counties, and finally got to some wonderfully challenging back roads. Twenty-mile-per-hour curves (feel those G's!), up one side of a ridge and down the other, then immediately onto another ridge. It was great. Hit a little rain that lasted about an hour, but still a nice drive. Got into Kentucky. Wasted about an hour trying to locate something called the Creelsboro Arch, also known locally as the Rock House. Found Creelsboro with no trouble, right where it was supposed to be. Followed the directions I had: one mile down this road, two miles down that road, then 6 miles down the other road. No arch. No one around to ask. Consulted a different web site, which put the arch about 4 miles further down the last road, so went there. Still no arch. Consulted another web site, which gave me the GPS co-ordinates for the arch. Plugged that in, and it put the arch about 12 miles in the opposite direction as the crow flies ... on the other side of a miles-long lake. Okay, gave up on finding the Creelsboro Arch, which wasn't all that tempting a formation anyway, it was just something to see that was supposedly along the way. So instead I continued on to my next planned stop, the West Pinnacle of Berea.

Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky, has a Forestry School that owns a forest a few miles east of the town. The forest includes half a dozen mountains and is open to the public for hiking from dawn to dusk, almost every day. I got to the huge parking area around 4pm and started up the trail. It was an easy half-mile walk to a point where there's a map of the trails and some information about the forest, including the sign that a solo hiker like me most likes to see:

Hikers Welcome

I decided to risk it. I was actually pretty comfortable about it, because there were lots and lots of people on the trail, going in both directions. (And again, only one wearing a mask: me.) After about three quarters of a mile of fairly steeply rising trail, I came to another junction. One trail went to the right, one went straight ahead, and the West Pinnacle trail went off to the left.

It started off as three-quarters of a mile of perfectly level track, absolutely deserted. I saw not a single person on the West Pinnacle trail, and except for the bear issue, I didn't mind that at all. I could stop to listen to the sounds of the forest: a woodpecker somewhere down the hill; an owl hooting not too far up the hill. Birds chirping all over, no wind to disturb the trees and mask their sound. Then the trail switched to a quarter-mile of nearly vertical track, and at one point I think I missed the trail, but found it again a little farther along. (Maybe I had chosen a path that used to be the trail?) I arrived pretty exhausted at the end, which has a pile of limestone that I couldn't find a way to climb, but circumnavigated twice. Took some pictures and started back, losing the trail again, then finding it again. There are several places where there seem to be several routes, and for all I know they all go to the same places, but it was disconcerting to think I might be sort of lost.

By the time I got back to the car it was getting on towards evening. I checked on line to see if I could locate lodging in any of the upcoming towns I was heading toward, but it seems the largest town I could expect to see in the next couple of hours was Beattyville, population 1206 and no motel. So I decided to stay in Berea. And so I didn't make it as far as Ohio today, as I'd thought I might. Gosh darn it.

(On the bright side, my room tonight is only costing me $43, including tax, and it's definitely good enough.)

And, once again, here's another link to the pictures from this trip.

Pandemic Wandering, Day 3

Saturday, in Nashville

The real reason I made this trip was to go to Lane's Motor Museum. I won't rehash the saga of my last trip to Nashville to see it; anyone who knows me has already heard it twice, even if they don't remember it. Today, though, I got there.

I also got to the Parthenon, the only other Major Sight Worth Seeing in Nashville (in my estimation). It did not disappoint.

pardon their landscaping dust

In 1896, Tennessee had its centennial as a state. A year later (money being scarce, it took a while to get enough together) they put on a celebration, a sort of World's Fair, and as part of that, they built a replica of the Parthenon as it would have looked before the ravages of war and time had their effect. It was meant to be temporary, and was built out of cardboard and glue. When the time came to tear it down (as they did with all the other buildings of the Centennial Celebration), the city of Nashville refused to let that happen. The building had wormed its way into the civic heart. So instead of tearing it down, they rebuilt it, this time out of concrete cleverly formulated to mimic the golden colour of the original. It's used as an art museum.

As a building, it's a glory. It doesn't have the dramatic setting of the original, up on its hill, but it has all the majesty. It is an excellent demonstration of what was so great about ancient Greek architecture. As an art museum, it's less impressive. There's a modest collection, mostly of landscapes donated by some rich guy a century ago, and it hosts other small travelling exhibits; small, because there's only one room on the one floor to exhibit in. The exhibition on show today was a particularly good example of how horribly bad modern art can be when an art-school graduate gets a bit of a name in toney art circles.

There is, though, a second floor, and when you ascend the stairs to it, you are astounded. It's a single large high-ceilinged room, a re-creation of the Temple of Athena as it would have been 2500 years ago in Athens, right down to the gaudy gigantic gilded statue of Athena. It is magnificent.

The statue of Nike in Athena's hand is 6'4" tall

That took up a much bigger chunk of my morning than I had anticipated.

Then came the Lane Motor Museum, the thing that drew me back to Nashville in the first place. I go to a lot of car museums. I love looking at the stylings of cars and how they've changed over the decades. The earliest cars were unadorned machines, but it didn't take long for appearances to become important in selling those machines, and by 1920, automotive design had developed into a Thing. Back then, many cars were sold as chassis and motor, and the purchaser hired a coachwork company to put a body on it. Manufacturers noticed, and soon they were offering bodies that, they hoped, would attract buyers to their cars. By the end of the Great Depression and the start of World War II, coachbuilders were either out of business or subsumed into manufacturing companies. (Think "Body by Fisher.") Very few have survived independently to the current era.

No, not a Thunderbird;
an Audi

And styling tastes vary greatly from company to company, and from country to country. That's why this particular museum was such a draw for me: it specialises in exhibiting European cars. (Others I've seen like that are the Tampa Automobile Museum and the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California.) Besides getting to see the different paths that foreign designers took, I also enjoy seeing the convergences between their tastes and American stylists' tastes. Right now, for example, you can look at any new car lot and see how American automotive designs have taken cues from designers in Germany and Japan, Italy and England; before, designers in those places took cues from Detroit.

And, of course, some of those foreign designs look just a little wacky to me.

1951 Hoffman (Germany)

1958 Tatra (Czechoslovakia)

1950 Lloyd (Germany)
vinyl skin over plywood

1991 Nissan (Japan)

As do some of the American designs I've seen.

1950 Martin Stationette (USA)

Those are fun to look at, but it's really for the exemplars of beauty that I go to car museums, the marriage of elegance and technological innovation. Foreign car stylists solve those marital problems in different ways from their American counterparts, and I like seeing how they do it.

And here, once again, is a link to the photo album for this trip. I apologise for the quality of the 150 or so car pictures I took today, but the building housing the collection has lots of windows and so lots of glare. You can take some comfort in knowing that I've deleted the worst of them.

Tomorrow, I head off to start counting counties, in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky; and I may even get to Ohio, but I doubt it.